1st Edition
Politics and Resistance of Coal in Australia and India Climate Justice Activism in the Global North and South
This book provides an in-depth, ethnography-based comparison of environmentalism in the global North and South through movement case studies situated in Australia and India.
Environmentalism, consisting of a set of ideologies, politics and imperatives towards resisting environmental destruction, is known to be realised differently between movements arising from different societies within the same geography. To demonstrate this, Ruchira Talukdar investigates the similarities and differences in anti-coal environmentalism through an ethnographic study of movements in Australia and India. She not only explores the politics, narratives, strategies and dynamics within environmental movements, but also their collaboration with the issue of Indigenous lands and rights on the frontline of coal extraction in both countries. The Stop Adani movement in Australia and its collaboration with the Wangan and Jagalingou and Farmers resisting the Galilee Basin coalmines in Queensland is critically compared with an anti-coal movement of Greenpeace and local forest-based communities in Mahan in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Overall, the book frames conceptual tools for students, research scholars and activists for intersectional environmentalism across the global North-South divide. The conclusions are particularly crucial to understand and counteract the dominance of Northern environmentalisms’ perspectives and make global environmentalism intersectional, decolonial, and representative.
The author’s unique vantage point and work experience in environmental activism over 20 years across India and Australia, combined with an extensive and immersive ethnographic fieldwork in both countries, make this a great resource for students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in climate justice, environmental politics and environmental activism.
Chapter 1: Introduction – A comparative ethnography of
anti-coal activism in India and Australia
1. Research case studies and questions
2. Research approach, methods, materials and structure
3. Book chapters and literatures
Chapter 2: Environmentalism of the global North and South: historic divisions and potential for common ground
1. A critique of wilderness-centric Northern environmentalism
2. Australian environmentalism
3. Indian environmentalism
4. Environmentalism’s divisions and common ground in the climate era
Chapter 3: Environmentalism of the poor in neoliberal India
1. Constitutional democracy
2. How the postcolonial State shaped Indian environmentalism
3. How the neoliberal State shapes environmentalism of the poor
4. Environmentalism of the poor in neoliberal India
Analysis: Environmentalism’s journey from democratising development to dissent as democracy
Chapter 4: Countering coal in India: politics of the Mahan coal mine
Background: Greenpeace’s activism in India
1. Political economy of coal in India
2. Politics and resistance of the Mahan coalmine (2010-2014)
3. State crackdown and fight back by Greenpeace (2014-2016)
Analysis: Countering coal through asserting democratic rights
Chapter 5: An anti-coal movement in India’s energy capital
Background: discontent and displacement in Singrauli
1. Use and abuse of the Forest Rights Act
2. Formation of the Mahan Sangharsh Samiti
3. State-corporate nexus in Mahan
4. An unusual alliance and its resistance
5. A celebration of people’s forest rights
Analysis: Significance of forest rights in India’s energy capital
Chapter 6: Environmentalism in the era of Australia’s minerals boom
1. Contradictions and unevenness of the Australian State
2. Minerals boom and contradictions of the Australian State
3. Narratives, politics and alliances of environmentalism
during the resource boom
Analysis: Environmentalism’s transformation to End(ing) Coal
Chapter 7: Countering coal in Australia: the politics of the Carmichael coalmine
1. Political economy of coal in Australia
2. Environmental politics of the Carmichael coalmine (2012-2018)
3. Land rights politics of the Carmichael coalmine (2010-2018)
Analysis: Countering coalmining through various scales of contestations
Chapter 8: Resistances from coal’s new frontier in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland
Background: Settler colonialism in the in the Galilee Basin
1. Tactics of anti-coal environmentalism
2. Rural discontent over coal and Farmers for Climate Action
3. ‘We meet at the crossroad’: Wangan and Jagalingou’s alliances
Analysis: The significance of countering Adani from Central Queensland
Chapter 9: A global outlook for anti-coal climate justice activism
1. Varieties of climate justice
2. Green relations with Indigenous and farmers’ groups
3. Indigenous land rights and resistances compared
4. Coal politics and environmental campaigns in India and Australia
5. Discussion: Possibilities and challenges in building a North-South intersectional outlook for environmentalism
6. Contributions to Political Ecology and Environmental Justice Research
9.7. Recommendation for further research
9.8. Conclusion
Index
Biography
Ruchira Talukdar has worked in environment movement in India and Australia, in Greenpeace, Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth, for two decades. Her research and writing focusses on comparative aspects of climate justice between the global North and South, with specific reference to Australia and South Asia. Her PhD thesis compared the politics and resistance to coal in Australia and India. Ruchira co-founded Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity, a climate justice project based out of Australia, for effective global North solidarity for just climate futures in the global South. She is based out of Melbourne and Calcutta.
“Impeccably researched, Ruchira Talukdar’s book is a timely contribution to the ongoing debates on coal in two most coal dependent countries of the world: India and Australia. This book is far greater than the poisoning curse of coal; it offers a passionate and devastating critique of dirty coal, and an enriching analysis of the resistances and different approaches to decarbonisation in these two countries. A fine book, immensely significant in shaping how the world will think about just transition.”
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Professor in Resource, Environment and Development, The Australian National University
“One of the provocative aspects of this book is the ultimate moral argument that combines human rights and land justice. This argument is quite significant. Human rights alone can fail to link with anti-colonial, resurgence, abolition, and other land-based social justice movements. Ruchira Talukdar makes a brilliant connection between human rights and land rights, and offers a solution to what are problematic rhetoric, policies, and proposals that privilege human rights against the deeper aspirations of many communities and populations suffering from injustice, and facing risks from climate change and climate change drivers. There are very few studies comparing northern and southern environmentalisms, placing historic and contemporary environmentalism in both contexts in cross-communication.”
Kyle Whyte, George Willis Pack Professor and University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, University of Michigan
“In this meticulous and in-depth investigation of anti-coal politics in Australia and India, Ruchira Talukdar shows us the power of subsistence communities in India and Indigenous peoples in Australia in slowing the pace of coal mine expansion and driving the shift towards renewable energy. While often on the frontline of coal extractivism – tied to human rights abuses, destruction of Country and exposure to environmental pollutants – subsistence and Indigenous communities are also the front line of its resistance. At times this resistance lines up alongside the environment movement; and other times it does not. This book comprehensively draws out the continuities and discontinuities between these rights-based campaigns and the broader environment movement. In so doing, it exposes how national and global environment movements sometimes sideline and/or silence a rights-based agenda as they seek to meet their own goals.
By giving voice to the environmentalism of the poor in India and Indigenous rights in Australia, this book demonstrates why centring rights, including Indigenous rights, will be vital to achieve social justice and environmental responsibility in a decarbonised world. Everyone aspiring for a climate just future should read this book. And those of us in the environment movement should definitely down tools long enough to read this book and let its message soak in; then pick our tools back up just a little more carefully.”
Kristen Lyons, Professor in Environment and Development Sociology, University of Queensland
